Lots of stuff in the press about “bird flu” this and “bird flu” that.

And you hear lots of numbers thrown around. For example in this CNN.com report where China says it is a “serious epidemic”. They have had 20 outbreaks in the last month alone.

Now I love this bit:

The latest cases resulted in the killing of nearly 175,000 birds.

Gee, doesn’t that sound like a lot? They are working hard to control this thing!

Em, maybe not so much. Did you realize that the United States (which, last time I looked was much smaller population-wise than china) produces more than 7 billion chickens a year? Did you know that a fair size poultry plant will process more than a million in a day? And that the loss of 200,000 is just a blip in the annual production of just one manufacturer, not to mention an entire industry?

So, hopefully what they’ve done will contain the latest outbreak. But 175,000 birds is a lot, but also not so much in the grand scheme of things.

I won’t even talk about how little I trust any “official” numbers from the chinese government. Have they started counting HIV/Aids as a disease yet?